How To Break Anything

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26 Dec 2011

The decline of ghost stories
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Suppose you wanted to create your own digital ghost to live for eternity in the Internet and maybe do some haunting. What would that look like?

You'd start now, backing up everything that happens on your computer to the so-called cloud (storage on the Internet). You'd run a program in the background that monitors your Facebook changes and all of your email conversations. Together with your photos, your resume, and all of your shopping and entertainment preferences, the program running in the cloud could piece together an avatar of you.

[...]

If I had to predict the odds that digital ghosts will someday exist, I'd say 100%. Stay alive for another five years and you will live forever, sort of.

via dilbert.com

I wouldn't be surprised if people stop telling ghost stories in the future. Much like how the idea of telling the stories ancient people told about their gods would seem a bit silly now; the narratives will simply no longer have the need to exist.
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2 Nov 2011

from: 11 per cent of Brits plan to leave their Internet passwords in their wills
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"While personal correspondence, damning photographs and leather-bound diaries were once purposely stowed away or destroyed by their owners, we handle our data differently now. Do you purge e-mails from exes after you break up? Could you bring yourself to delete your cringe-worthy online journal or would you just privatize your entries?"

via theglobeandmail.com
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22 Nov 2010

[weak signals] "Dating site uses literary tastes for matchmaking"
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via springwise.com

Dating sites seem to be an interesting ground for people trying to figure out new ways to better understand "want"; it doesn't seem to come through the literal "judge someone's bio & profile" approach. See also http://www.howaboutwe.com.
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27 Oct 2010

Distributed R&D
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People have long been aware that, during big TV moments--epic sports contests or the finale of Lost, for example--the Twittersphere rapidly fills up with TV-related hashtags. Last week Google Ventures invested in Miso, a social TV app that allows users to comment on their TV shows as they happen. Miso, however, is not the only fish in the social TV app sea. As well as Comcast's Tunerfish, there is Starling, a startup that launched back in April at MIPtv in Cannes, whose aim is "enhancing the real-time experience" of watching television, according to its President of the Americas, Kenny Miller.

via fastcompany.com

The above is from an article earlier this year covering the development of social TV.

Google Ventures is an excellent reminder that internal R&D departments don't exist anymore, only investments in innovative thinkers organizing around the globe.

Research & Enabling Department (R&E)?
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9 Aug 2010

[weak signals] The Personal "Fly On The Wall" And Its [technosocial] Effects
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We live in a world of ubiquitous computing -- there are ever more computing devices everywhere.
We will soon live in a world of ubiquitous video cameras. You probably have one staring at you right now just inches away from your face -- the camera in your laptop or desktop ... It will be as if there is always a "fly on the wall" watching and recording everything.

People will carry what I call a "personal fly" -- a personal security device containing a tiny video camera fitted into a pendant or broach, embedded in clothing, earrings, or in eye glasses. ...

What interests me is how such personal security devices (PSDs) will affect our behavior in our social spaces. What will be the new manners?

- Will it be rude to wear a personal security device at a dinner party?

- WIll it be rude to ask someone to turn off their PSD?

- How can you know if someone's PSD is on or off? (You can't know for sure...)

- Will it be rude to archive all your recordings? ...

Surveillance by Big Brother is less scary than surveillance by each other, by people you know and know you.

via siliconvalleywatcher.com

via weaksignals.posterous.com
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4 Aug 2010

[weak signals] "Most College Students Don’t Think Twice Before Plagiarizing From The Web"
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New York Times reports on a disturbing trend among college students who are simply unmindful or intentionally involved in plagiarism when it comes to using resources from the web. Several surveys conducted have proved that many students do not cite the author or credit the source when copying from a site, even believing its not “serious cheating”. The Times adds that the Internet may be changing the way how students understand the concept of authorship on the web.

Now we have a whole generation of students who’ve grown up with information that just seems to be hanging out there in cyberspace and doesn’t seem to have an author,” said Teresa Fishman, director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University. “It’s possible to believe this information is just out there for anyone to take.

But why is this phenomenon of plagiarism so widespread in the digital world? Sarah Brookover, a student at the Rutgers University provides an apt explanation:

This generation has always existed in a world where media and intellectual property don’t have the same gravity. When you’re sitting at your computer, it’s the same machine you’ve downloaded music with, possibly illegally, the same machine you streamed videos for free that showed on HBO last night. Because you’re not walking into a library, you’re not physically holding the article, which takes you closer to ‘this doesn’t belong to me,’ ” she said. Online, “everything can belong to you really easily.”

NY Times: “Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age”

via psfk.com

A fantastic discussion brewing around this development. On one level this is about the form/style of attribution, and it's relation to academic honesty, etc. On another it reflects the impact of digital accessibility to/ephemeralization of content - most notably manifested in notions like Faris' idea of recombinant culture/remix culture; one critical question here is "to what extent is one person's ideas their own?" It's a question that can now be asked and studied in a meaningful way directly because this digitization.
via weaksignals.posterous.com
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